Israel and Iran: at war.

The past week has been exhausting. It's been jam-packed with terrible events, trying to get information on how friends and acquaintances are doing, sending well wishes, arguing with people who have no historical or even current information but still presume to judge. People who do not know a single person from the Eastern Mediterranean personally or have ever been to the region and yet believe that they have eaten wisdom with spoons and are allowed to form opinions and judgments and defend them vehemently and against better information. People who would probably never presume to take sides in the Sudan conflict - but when it comes to Israel, we Germans are apparently already in the picture by genetic code. What madness!

Needed?

On Wednesday last week, I had a long “kitchen table conversation” as I call it. And I explained that and why Israel would attack Iran at the weekend and thus rid itself of the nuclear threat and potential destruction. I was not at all surprised when I was proved right on Friday. Unlike Iran's previous attacks on Israel (here A new world and here Iran attacks Israel, again. are my blog posts on the subject), the signs of the times were clear. When the us embassies withdraw staff and Trump's ultimatum expires - then whoever could see knew what was coming. And it was also clear to anyone with even a little knowledge of the subject that a war with Iran would unfortunately be a completely different matter than with Hezbollah and Hamas. Years ago, I always said to my students in my seminars at the University of Hamburg or at Helmut-Schmidt-University: "We are treating Iran as a nuclear power in this seminar. Whether it is technically ready or not. Because only then will the threat situation become clear and many people will understand it better."

I studied international law for a few semesters, but I don't presume to call myself an expert in international law. I will therefore refrain from commenting here on any legal or unlawful situation. I would like to refer to Michael Wolffsohn, who wrote the following in his opinion piece in the Jüdische Allgemeine on June 14, 2025: "Israel's attack on Iran's nuclear facilities was inevitable. Because one consequence of Jewish history is that mass murderers and their announcements of extermination must be taken seriously. Large parts of the non-Jewish world do not know the consequences of Jewish history in Israel and the Jewish world: "Never again victims! And when the going gets tough, better to strike first than to be struck first and then forever.“” I think that actually says it all (https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/israel/nie-wieder-opfer-3/).

And I believe what we observe it simply a sign that people have learned from history. Jews and Israelis are proving that they have learned. Unlike the governments and politicians, societies and the press, who have pursued a “completely misguided Iran policy” for decades instead of "finally calling for a new Iran policy - in 2024, German exports to Iran amounted to around 1.28 billion euros. Especially in the ranks of the SPD and the Greens, who have played a decisive role in shaping German foreign policy in recent decades, one should be wary of arguing from a position of moral superiority. If it ever existed, it has long since been squandered in the face of a misguided Iran policy. This can be clearly seen in the calls for de-escalation now coming from this corner. When will these calls come? Not after it finally became clear that the Iranian regime has increased its uranium enrichment to a level that rules out civilian use, but after the Israeli attack on precisely this Iranian nuclear program.

Diplomacy can be a weapon and it should always be the first one to be used, but it must be used! In the JCPoA, the nuclear agreement between the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany and the anti-Semitic regime in Tehran, such a weapon was laid down, but has remained unused to this day: The snapback mechanism, which would have meant a return to the sanctions against the mullahs before the agreement. If you have such an instrument in your hands and do not use it even when the Iranian regime is constantly breaking the agreement, you are making yourself untrustworthy and are literally inviting the mullahs to undermine the agreement further and further" (Constantin Ganß, https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/meinung/es-geht-um-mehr-als-deeskalation-oder-drecksarbeit/).

And while 1.5 days of summer are now upon us in northern Germany and people are frolicking around outside, being remarkably friendly to each other and buying barbecued meat and ice cream like there's no tomorrow, Israel continues to fight its desperate multi-front war. And we, who have the privilege of not having to be there, can only do what we have done in the last few days: Hope and fear for family and friends and again and again like a prayer wheel: Hopefully it's over soon.